Gender-inclusive Nutrition Activities in South Asia : Volume 2. Lessons from Global Experiences
This paper examines promising approaches from a wide array of literatures to improve gender-inclusive nutrition interventions in South Asia. It is the second of a series on gender and nutrition in South Asia. The first paper explored why gender mat...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2013
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/04/18123770/gender-inclusive-nutrition-activities-south-asia-vol-2-2-lessons-global-experiences http://hdl.handle.net/10986/15980 |
| Summary: | This paper examines promising approaches
from a wide array of literatures to improve gender-inclusive
nutrition interventions in South Asia. It is the second of a
series on gender and nutrition in South Asia. The first
paper explored why gender matters for undernutrition in the
region and conducted a mapping of regional nutrition
initiatives to find that gender is too narrowly addressed in
most programs if at all. Adequately addressing gender2
requires nutrition programs to focus not only on health
services and information for the mother and her children,
but also on her autonomy and the support she receives from
her partner, other household members, and the broader
community. This focus is especially important for adolescent
mothers in the region, who have very low status. The present
study drew from the conceptual framework of the previous
paper and investigated four types of innovations in
nutrition initiatives that address gender. These entail
promoting: (1) women s household autonomy; (2) household
support for the woman and her own and her children s
nutrition; (3) community support for the woman and her own
and her children s nutrition; and (4) help for adolescent
girls. Though the ideal "gender-inclusive nutrition
interventions" package (GINI for short) was never
found, based on the findings of this review, it can be
described. Indeed, it is quite consonant with this study s
conceptual framework. The most effective programs would
encompass the following "success factors": (a)
ensure that the targeted women not only earn but control
income (as in the HKI homestead garden projects in
Bangladesh, Nepal and Cambodia); (b) get the powerful
members of young married women s households - men and
paternal grandmothers - on board by means of peer advocacy
and community-oriented programs that (c) provide them with
information on nutrition and women s child welfare-focused
spending patterns, (d) as well as (small) incentives so they
don t seize control of income or marketable food generated
by those women. These programs also would (e) train
forward-looking local women (including grandmothers) and men
for volunteer roles (preferably with small incentives for
sustainability). (f) They would provide BCC on nutrition and
help increase support by community leaders, religious
figures and members for young women s livelihoods as well as
mother/child nutrition. (g) Finally, the ideal GINI would
also target teen girls, offering them nutrition information,
along with incentives to parents to keep them in school and
programs for the girls to earn money. Positive examples
encountered in the literature are presented below (along
with some partial successes that need further refinement).
If polished and scaled up, such programs could put a big
dent in the "South Asian Enigma" and both the
gender inequities and malnutrition that define it. |
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